A blink of lightning, thena rumor, a grumble of white raingrowing in volume, rustling over the ground,drenching the gravel in a wash of sound.Drops tap like timpani or shinelike quavers on a line.
It rings on exposed tin,a suite for water, wind and bin,plinky Poulenc or strongly groaning Brahms’rain-strings, a whole string section that describesthe very shapes of thought in warmself-referential vibes
and spreading ripples. Soonthe whispering roar is a recital.Jostling rain-crowds, clamorous and vital,struggle in runnels through the afternoon.The rhythm becomes a regular beat;steam rises, body heat—
and now there’s city noise,bits of recorded pop and rock,the drums, the strident electronic shock,a vast polyphony, the dense refrainof wailing siren, truck and trainand incoherent cries.
All human life is therein the unconfined, continuous crashwhose slow, diffused implosions gather upcar radios and alarms, the honk and beep,and tiny voices in a crèchepiercing the muggy air.
Squalor and decadence,the rackety global-franchise rush,oil wars and water wars, the diatoniccrescendo of a cascading world economyare audible in the hectic thrashof this luxurious cadence.
The voice of Baal explodes,raging and rumbling round the clouds,frantic to crush the self-sufficient spacesand re-impose his failed hegemonyin Canaan before moving onto other simpler places.
At length the twining chordsrun thin, a watery sun shines out,the deluge slowly ceases, the guttural chantsubsides; a thrush sings, and discordant thirdsdiminish like an exhausted concerton the subdominant.
The angry downpour swarmsgrowling to far-flung fields and farms.The drains are still alive with trickling water,a few last drops drip from a broken gutter;but the storm that created so much fusshas lost interest in us.